[whatwg] Answering the question... (timing of table headers issue)

[Ian Hickson]

John, Dan and Maciej wrote:
>
> [snip]

I'd like to request, if that is at all possible, that we keep this kind of 
discussion out of the WHATWG mailing list.

Insofar as the WHATWG and the WHATWG HTML5 document are concerned, people 
are welcome to make any statements they like, especially on their blogs 
and in bug systems, as well as on the WHATWG's own blog, on forums, in the 
WHATWG IRC channel, or wherever. This discussion, therefore, is irrelevant 
to this mailing list.

In addition, I'd like to request that the tone of e-mails sent to the 
WHATWG list be kept far more civil than the original e-mail in this 
thread. All WHATWG contributors are a team working together.


Regarding the specific issue raised, namely that of the ability for all 
users of HTML pages to determine without ambiguity which header cells 
apply to which data cells in tables in HTML documents, this is one of the 
many hundreds of open issues, which you can see on the issues list:

   http://www.whatwg.org/issues/

If you would like for me to prioritise one issue over another, please vote 
for the issue e-mail in question. Anyone who has written an e-mail that 
has ended up in that list at some point is able to vote. In general I 
would counsel patience; features from HTML4 (such as headers="" or 
style="") are not a high priority since they already have a specification 
and therefore what HTML5 says about them does not really matter on the 
short term while HTML5 is in such early stages as it is now. Rest assured 
that universal access is an integral part of the design of all HTML 
features, including tables, and all feedback, whether sent to this list or 
to the HTMLWG list or anywhere else that I hear about will get considered 
in due course.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'